Fikret Adanýr

Course Description

The Caucasus
and its hinterland, which separate as well as connect the Pontic, the Caspian,
and the Persian Gulf basins, have been a strategically important and therefore
contested space since antiquity. In modern times, the region was at first
fought over by the rival Muslim empires of the Ottomans and the Safavids. The
entry of imperial Russia into the arena in the last decades of the eighteenth
century ushered in the era of Christian predominance. The next century saw the
penetration of the whole Muslim Middle East by western economic interests,
accompanied by new conflicts and alignments both on intraregional and
international levels. Whereas the evolution of the so-called Eastern Question
that implied the settlement of the Ottoman succession parallel to Russian
expansion into Transcaucasia encouraged the Christian populations of the region
(the Georgians, the Armenians) to aspire to self-rule and even independence,
the Muslims felt humiliated and feared a degradation of their traditional ways
of life. Their reaction, beginning with the mountaineers' resistance to Russian
colonization of the north Caucasus in the last decades of the eighteenth
century and reaching its apex under the leadership of Imam Shamil (1834-1859),
exacerbated by forced migrations of the Circassians and other Caucasian groups
into Anatolia, entailed in the long run ethnic and religious violence in
various forms, directed against both the neighbouring groups and the imperial
centres. This development culminated in mass deportations and genocidal events
during the two world wars of the twentieth century, ethnic conflict,
nationalist secessionism and imperialist rivalries breaking out with new vigour
in the post-Soviet era. The
course will approach this complex history from the vantage point of the concept
of "zones of violence", studying and discussing thereby the
catastrophic experiences of the period within a multicausal framework.

Requirements and Grading

1.Attendance
and informed participation (20 percent of the course grade).

2.One
short (15 minutes) presentation on the basis of an assigned text (article or
book chapter) during the semester (20 percent).

3.A
research paper on one of the weekly topics of the course syllabus and its
presentation and discussion in the class (20 to 30 minutes). The final paper
(about 20 pages, double-spaced, 12-point script) is due on the last day of the
class meeting and will count for 30 percent of the course grade.

4.An
exam at the end of the semester which will consist of three questions to be
answered in essay form about the content, the historical framework and the
contemporary relevance of a one-page text/primary source (30 percent of the
course grade).

Schedule of Topics and Readings

Week 01: Introduction

Week 02: The Caucasus before
the nineteenth century

Required
Readings:

Lemercier-Quelquejay, Chantal:
"Co-optation of Elites of Kabarda and Daghestan in the Sixteenth
Century", in Broxup, Marie Bennigsen (ed.), The North Caucasus Barrier:
the Russian Advance towards the Muslim World (London: Hurst, 1992), 18-44.

Zelkina, Anna: Jihād
in the name of God: Shaykh Shamil as the religious leader of the Caucasus, Central
Asian Survey 21:3 (2002), 249–264.

Khodarkovsky, Michael: The
Indigenous Elites and the Construction of Ethnic Identities in the North
Caucasus. Conference "Research and Identity:
Non-Russian Peoples in the Russian Empire, 1800-1855", Kymenlaakso Summer
University, 14-17 June 2006 http://www.circassianworld.
com/Khodarkovsky_Kymenlaakso.pdf

Week 06: The Russo-Ottoman War of
1877/78 and the consequences

Required
Readings:

Karpat, Kemal
H.: "The hijra from Russia and
the Balkans: the process of self‑definition in the late Ottoman
State", in Eickelman, Dale F. and James Piscatori (eds.), Muslim travellers. Pilgrimage, migration,
and the religious imagination (London
1990), 131‑152.

Nalbandian, Louise: The Armenian revolutionary
move­ment. The development of Armenian political parties through the nineteenth
century (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1963).

Recommended
Readings:

Deringil, Selim: The Well-Protected Domains:
Ideology and the legitimation of power in the Ottoman Empire 1876-1909 (London:
Tauris, 1998).

Kemal H. Karpat: The Politicization of Islam. Reconstructing identity, state, faith, and
community in the late Ottoman State (Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 2001).

Klein, Janet: Power in the periphery: The
Hamidiye Light Cavalry and the struggle over Ottoman Kurdistan, 1890-1914,
Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 2002.

Week 07:Revolutions of the early
twentieth century

Required
Readings:

Suny, Ronald
Grigor: "Nationalism and social class in the Russian Revolution: the cases
of Baku and Tiflis, in Suny, Ronald Grigor (ed.), Transcaucasia. Nationalism
and Social Change (Ann Arbor 1983), 239-258.

Week 11:Caucasus and its
hinterland in the interwar period

Required
Readings:

Avtorkhanov,
Abdurrahman: "The Chechens and the Ingush during the Soviet period and its
antecedents", in Broxup, Marie Bennigsen (ed.), The North Caucasus
barrier: the Russian ddvance towards the Muslim World (London: Hurst 1992),
146-194.

Required
Readings:

Dadrian, Vahakn
N.: "Nationalism in Soviet Armenia - a case study of ethnocentrism",
in Simmonds, George W. (ed.), Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe in
the era of Brezhnev and Kosygin (Detroit 1977), 202-258.